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EvidenceNOW: Tools and Resources

The Agency for Healthcare and Quality (AHRQ) offers practical, research-based tools and other resources to help a variety of health care origanizations, provider, and others make care safer in all health care settings. AHRQ's evidence-based tools and resources are used by organizations nationwide to improve the quality, safety, effectiveness, and efficiency of health care. Improving health care quality by increasing the capacity of small primary care practices to implement the best clinical evidence is our aim. These tools and resources can be searched by the key drivers and the change strategies of the EvidenceNOW Key Driver Diagram.

This online continuing medical education (CME) module explains how to implement a team-based approach to enter documentation (scribe) and how it can be supported and improved by electronic health record (EHR) systems.

This workflow shows how medical assistants can provide a check to ensure that evidence-based care is delivered by identifying patients with heart disease who, according to protocol, should have, but have not, been prescribed aspirin.

This collection of tools that helps practices decide whether to implement new evidence includes a worksheet for assessing research findings, a template for summarizing findings, and links to additional resources for selecting and customizing evidence.

This resource describes characteristics of high-functioning care teams and shares methods for helping teams improve their effectiveness. It details common challenges faced by primary care teams and how to solve them.

It is important for primary care team members to feel they can ask for help, try new ways of doing things, and learn from mistakes. This resource provides suggestions for how practices can help quality improvers feel safe.

This 2011 report published by the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) recommends standards for developing trustworthy guidelines on care options for health care providers, patients, and organizations.

This manual provides a training curriculum that teaches medical assistants (MA) to take on an expanded role in the primary care team by doing more during the rooming process, from reviewing medications, to goal setting, to patient education.

This resource provides step-by-step instructions for finding, evaluating, and using research evidence to make informed decisions in health care. It describes six steps to consider when gathering evidence to make a well-informed decision.